"When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him." By these words in a Sept. 11, 1941, fireside chat, Franklin Roosevelt authorized US warships to fire first against Nazi naval vessels, which he called "the rattlesnakes of the Atlantic."
Roosevelt's order applied whenever German or Italian ships entered "waters of self-defense" necessary to protect the US, including those surrounding US outposts on Greenland and Iceland.
 Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Image source: National Archives and Records Administration/Wikimedia Commons) |
Uttered 60 years to the day before 9/11, and less than three months before Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt's words still resonate. North Korea's sixth nuclear test last weekend, along with its significantly increased ballistic-missile testing, establishes that Pyongyang is perilously close to being able to hit targets across the continental United States with nuclear warheads, perhaps thermonuclear ones.
The Nazi threat to US shipping, both normal commercial traffic and war supplies destined for Great Britain, was undeniably significant, and the Axis powers' broader totalitarian threat was existential. Nonetheless, right up to Dec. 7, 1941, many American leaders urged caution to avoid provoking the Axis and thereby risking broader conflict. Pearl Harbor followed.
In his chat, Roosevelt observed that others had "refused to look the Nazi danger squarely in the eye until it actually had them by the throat." We shouldn't commit that mistake today. North Korea's behavior, and its lasting desire to conquer the South, have created the present crisis.
Letting Kim Jong-un's bizarre regime "have America by the throat," subjecting us and our allies to perpetual nuclear extortion, is not an acceptable outcome.
We have endured 25 years of US diplomatic failure, with endless rounds of negotiations, presenting North Korea with the choice between economic incentives or sanctions. During this time, which certainly constitutes "not looking the danger squarely in the eye," North Korea has repeatedly breached commitments to abandon its nuclear-weapons program, often made in return for handsome compensation.
Nonetheless, we hear echoes from Roosevelt's day that "there is no acceptable military option" when it comes to Pyongyang. This means, as Susan Rice said recently, "we can, if we must, tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea," as we did with the Soviets in Cold War days. The US should not accept such counsels of despair, based on dangerously facile and wildly inaccurate historical analogies.
Why accept a future of unending nuclear blackmail by Pyongyang, whose governing logic is hardly that of Cold War Moscow, and which would entail not that era's essentially bipolar standoff, but a far-more-dangerous world of nuclear multipolarity?
If Washington lets Kim retain his nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, his regime will happily sell these materials and technologies to Iran, other rogue states or terrorist groups for the right price. This is another key difference from the Cold War; Moscow was substantially more worried about nuclear proliferation than Pyongyang now is.
It would be, as Roosevelt understood, "inexcusable folly" to ignore North Korea's pattern of behavior over the last quarter century: "We Americans are now face to face not with abstract theories but with cruel, relentless facts." For America in 1941, hope of sheltering behind the oceans was fast disappearing, forcing Roosevelt to extend our maritime defense perimeter effectively across the Atlantic to Europe.
In the age of ICBMs, there's no "perimeter"; we are at risk in agonizingly short time frames of a missile's flight launched anywhere, whether from North Korea or Iran. It is completely unacceptable to say we must await a first strike by Pyongyang before we will resort to military force. Roosevelt dismissed such arguments peremptorily: "Let us not say: 'We will only defend ourselves if the torpedo succeeds in getting home, or if the crew and passengers are drowned.' "
The remaining diplomatic options are few, and the time to exercise them dwindling fast. Convincing China that its national interests would be enhanced by reunifying the two Koreas, thus ending what Beijing itself believes is a threat to peace and security in northeast Asia, remains possible. Unfortunately, this is increasingly hard to accomplish before North Korea becomes a fully mature nuclear-weapons state.
We're moving rapidly to the point where Roosevelt said squarely, "It is the time for prevention of attack." George W. Bush spoke equally directly in 2002: "Our security will require all Americans to be . . . ready for preemptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives." The alternative is potentially global proliferation of nuclear weapons, with the attendant risks lasting beyond our power to calculate.
John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is Chairman of Gatestone Institute, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad".
This article first appeared in The New York Post and is reprinted here with the kind permission of the author.
This time I agree with the critics of John Bolton that he has gone overboard in encouraging pre-emptive action against North Korea. In the kind of existing technology at the time that FDR made that speech he may well have been right, but today it could be suicidal. It has been clearly stated by China that if America attacks NK first, it will defend NK, and we know that China is a nuclear power, and is no longer incompetent militarily, but China also made it clear that if NK takes the first military step, it will not defend it. A pre-emptive attack on NK will lead, IMO to amageddon.
As well, the suggestion that the Koreas should be combined is like trying to mix oil and water. China will never allow a democratic ally of the USA to sit on its border.
"And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I
Wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and
Guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill,
Kill, kill. " And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "kill, kill, " and
He started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down
Yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me,
Sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy.""
(Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant)
Buzz , question, can Videos be downloaded to members page?
Although I've never done it, I know you can post videos to articles and comments (click on the little film strip above your comment window, and then you will see a link for "video", and on your own profile page you can post a YouTube but I really don't know anything else about videos. Ask Sixpick - he's really good at posting videos that even I can watch here.
09/09/17 06:47:52AM @buzz-of-the-orient:
Although I've never done it, I know you can post videos to articles and comments (click on the little film strip above your comment window, and then you will see a link for "video", and on your own profile page you can post a YouTube but I really don't know anything else about videos. Ask Sixpick - he's really good at posting videos that even I can watch here.
E.A No, I know how to do that and I have been doing it, it is that I thought as to help, You, if it was possible to download Video on the NT Server on Members Pages, then you be ably to see what you are restricted to now
I wouldn't know if it can be done or if it can how to do it, but if you want to try I'll check and see if I can open it.
09/09/17 07:03:40AM @buzz-of-the-orient:
I wouldn't know if it can be done or if it can how to do it, but if you want to try I'll check and see if I can open it.
E.A Ok thank you that is what I was asking, it should be next to the Photo Download, if it is activated, then I would download any Video you want to but can not see otherwise!
I've gone through everything on my profile page and can't find anything that enables me to open a video, and I haven't seen any notification that one was posted. Sorry, but I'm really not very computer savvy.
Send in ONE bomb to N Korea and all their brainwashing becomes reality for those folks.
N Korean people have been told for decades that America will attack them and invade them and we will make them our slaves. One bomb and Lil Kim will have them emptying out their life savings for The cause. Lil Kim would be more powerful than ever.
trump's playing with fire.